China Conducts Largest-Ever Military Skills Competition

Beijing’s centennial goal aims to strengthen the military with the capability to defend China’s national sovereignty, safeguard against security threats posed by the hegemony in the western pacific region and protect overseas development interests

@Kunal_Chonkar

New Delhi: In efforts to explore new training modules and practices for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops and to compare their skills with other armed forces, China last week held ‘the largest-ever’ military skills competition in the country. The competition is seen as part of the roadmap sketched by the PLA, after President Xi Jinping in October called upon the armed forces to strengthen the training of troops and gear up for war.

According to the translated reports, Beijing’s held the Joint Logistics Support Force (JLSF) held ‘Jingwu Lianqin – 2020’ (Elite Masters of Joint Logistics – 2020) competition between November 28 to December 2. The competition featured over 1000 participants, who came from each joint logistics support center, general hospitals of the PLA, and subordinate military units.

The reports said that the competition was held to gauge ‘combat processes’, and ‘contents for core capabilities’ such as dividing joint logistics support actions into the three groups – command organizations, support units, and elite joint logistics troops. According to a defence analyst, the competition also contrived the command organizations to focus on planning and control, the support units to emphasize comprehensive capabilities, while the elite joint logistics troops to prioritize their key role delivering one specialty and many capabilities.

The participants adopted a ‘1+10+21’ model wherein the command post was selected from each of the joint logistics support center, 10 support units, and 21 types of individual troops, covering the ‘entire range’ of support elements from command, finance, supply, medical rescue, transport, field camps, ammunition, intelligence, and others. Beijing had flown in over 100 military experts, defence specialists, academicians, and operators as judges for the competition.

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China’s Deputy Chief of Staff of the JLSF, Huang Yuliang, who witnessed the five-day-long competition, with other senior PLA officers said that ‘the competition was to look and prepare for the future battlefield.’

The analyst claimed that the entire competition was recorded and will now be examined by senior training officers of the PLA, who will use it to develop new modules and practices as part of China’s centennial goal of military development 2027. “The centennial goal aims to strengthen the military with the capability to defend China’s national sovereignty, safeguard against security threats posed by the hegemony in the western pacific region and protect overseas development interests,” the analyst added.

The JLSF

On September 13, 2016, China established the JLSF of the Central Military Commission (CMC) in Beijing. President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC), conferred military flags at the establishment ceremony to the Wuhan Joint Logistic Support Base and its five joint logistic support centers, namely Wuxi Joint Logistic Support Center, Guilin Joint Logistic Support Center, Xining Joint Logistic Support Center, Shenyang Joint Logistic Support Center, and Zhengzhou Joint Logistic Support Center.

During the ceremony, President Xi was quoted as saying that ‘China should speed up its military construction according to the requirements of joint operations, joint training and joint support, so as to build a strong and modern joint logistic support force.’ He underscored the establishment of the joint logistic support base and the joint logistic support centers ‘as a strategic measure to deepen the reform of the leading and commanding system of China’s military and construct a modern joint logistic support system with Chinese military characteristics, which is of great and far-reaching significance to building Chinese military into a world first-class military and wining modern regional wars.’

President Xi was also quoted as saying that the ‘JLSF is the main force to conduct joint logistic support and strategic and operational logistic support, and is a significant component of the modern military force system with Chinese characteristics.